Tender Is The Pork

 

 

I have recently purchased an InstantPot, but it is the Nesco slow cooker that is cooking my dinner at the moment!  This would work as well in the InstantPot using the slow cooker feature, I presume, but there was such a small amount of ingredients, that I thought it would do better in a smaller unit.

Someone asked about using the freezer in conjunction with a slow cooker . . . BINGO! That’s my favorite way of using it.  If I find a good sale on some sort of meats, I get as much as I can afford and brown ‘em up in the Nesco Roaster or on the stove – depending on what they are.  Then into the freezer in meal-sized quantities.  They can come out to be the star of a meal with little effort – just whip up a starch and a veggie, if that is how you eat, et voilá, dinner is served.

Right at this very minute, there are two beautifully browned pork chops in the 1.5 qt. model Nesco, with a variety of bits of different sauces and other juices/veggies that I had acquired over the last few days.   I took out a package of pork chops, thawed it in the microwave, and put them into the 1.5 qt. Nesco slow cooker – the pretty red one.  I put in some broth, a bit of pasta sauce, and some leftover veggies and let it bubble away for about three hours.  For the last hour or so, I plopped in a bit of cabbage.

Oh, I defrosted the meat first before putting it into the Crock-Pot and preheated the unit itself so the food did not sit at an unhealthy temperature for a long time before it came up to 160 degrees.  The meat totally fell off the bones, and was sooooo tender.  The red things are half a beet, and on top of the bulgur is some of the jarred red pepper ratatouille that I found recently at Big Lots.  That stuff is WON-derful!  The white pitcher had the juices that had collected in the Crock-Pot.

I’ll serve it over bulgur that is made without cooking by using a vacuum bottle. Bulgur cooks quickly, so tossing it into my Nissan three-cup vacuum bottle with some boiling water produces a delicious side dish with the veggies from the pork “stew” on top in almost no time at all, and it will stay hot and delicious as long as you need it to.  No fussing around with a starch or grain at the last minute.

If you like tabbouleh salad, the leftover bulgur can quickly be made into that sort of side dish almost instantly.  Here is a recipe from the net.

tabbouleh salad recipe

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